“When you run the marathon, you run against the distance, not against the other runners and not against the time.”

- Haile Gebrselassie

 

Haile Gebrselassie, born on 18 April 1973, is an Ethiopian long-distance track and road running athlete who is regarded as one of the greatest distance runners in history. He won two Olympic gold medals over 10,000 m and four World Championship titles in the event.

He won the Berlin Marathon four times consecutively and also had three straight wins at the Dubai Marathon. Further to this, he won four world titles indoors and was the 2001 World Half Marathon Champion.

[caption id="attachment_199005" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie is regarded as one of the greatest distance runners in history[/caption]

Haile had major competition wins at distances between 1500 metres and the marathon, moving from outdoor, indoor and cross country running to road running in the latter part of his career. He broke 61 Ethiopian national records ranging from 800 metres to the marathon, set 27 world records.

In September 2008, at the age of 35, he won the Berlin Marathon with a world record time of 2:03.59 seconds breaking his own world record by 27 seconds. The record stood for three years. Haile was cited as one of the Top 100 most influential Africans by New African magazine in 2011.

During the Hachalu Hundessa riots in the summer of 2020, businesses and properties of non-Oromo’s were targeted by Oromo mobs. As a result, Gebrselassie’s hotels and resort was burned with 400 employees lost their jobs.